Credit to Igshar(Note- the assumption at the time was that the DoT would not benefit from Kaiten. Oh boy it does. And that's a LOT more potency.
It's less Hagakure, more wanting to get Hagakure and Midare Setsugekka out as fast as possible. Hagakure uses sen, Midare uses sen, Higanbana uses sen. That means that we're looking at either 5 total sen for the opener (1-sen Hagakure) or 7 total sen.
So yes, use Kaiten on Higanbana in the opener. You will have enough Kenki for it.)This is the more likely opener. I can link the thread discussing as to why it probably will be, and the more advanced arguments about Hagakure, but to put it simply here, and from the top.1- Speed buff combo comes first to help fit things within party buff windows. You can 1-Haga the Sen you gained for Kenki. Since that resets your Sen.
(continued in 2)2- Your Higanabana (DoT) is delayed to fit well within TA/Litany and such. The combo you'll use to generate the Sen for Higanbana is Gekko (Damage buff), so it will also benefit from that.3- Hagakure should always be a DPS gain, and never a loss as long as you are not going over 100 Kenki or using it on boss jumps. It should be used often.
However, using it exclusively as 3-Haga (eating 3 Sen) isn't a huge gain, if at all, and will make DoT application kind of weird on occasion. The math in two rotations more or less showed that.For more advanced Samurai stuff.Your note on Meikyo is a great one, and people should take notice as to how to use Meikyo mid-rotation or mid-Sen if you will. (This is advice for AFTER your opener, deeper into a fight). If you use Meikyo, and somewhere in the middle you activate Midare, make sure the last Sen is corresponding to a buff that doesn't need immediate reapplication. If you don't, you'll be doing that same buff/debuff after, and NOT gaining a Sen. As a pure example of what this looks like.
Let's lay the scenario. You currently have Flower (Kasha) and just applied Moon (Gekko) (2)Sen unlocked. Damage buff timer is at 30 seconds. Speed buff timer is at 13 seconds.
Here's how you'd use Meikyo Shisui: Gekko (we just pick up at your last weaponskill used) MeikyoYukikazeKaitenMidareYukikazeGekko (Meikyo ends). You're left with Ice (Yukikaze) and Moon (Gekko). Neither combo needs refreshed, and you're free to refresh your speed combo that was running out, get a Sen, and perform a Midare all in the shortest time frame possible. That's kind of confusing, but I tried explaining it best as possible.A similar-ish rule applies to your AoE rotation. Let's say you put up your damage buff (which I recommend since you'll be using beefy AoE).
That's the Moon Sen. So let's say your damage buff is running out. Your last AoE before you reapply your damage buff should be the AoE that grants Flower. That way, when you go to reapply your damage buff, you get the Moon Sen, which will lead right into Tenka.Your note on Shinten/Kenki usage is also mostly on point. By using that rule of thumb, you'll never be without Kenki for Midare/Higanbana.
However, that mostly assumes you're not operating on a surplus, which eventually will happen in any given fight based on jump periods where you'll meditate, and such. You could get away with using Shintens as low as 35 Kenki. The shortest combo is Yukikaze. If you have exactly 35 Kenki upon Hakaze, and do. Hakaze ShintenYukikaze, you go from 351020. You will have Kaiten for whatever follows.All of SAM's buffs/debuffs are 30 seconds. For simple rule on clipping, and what to do next in your rotation.
When they are ALL up, look for the buff/debuff with 13 seconds or below remaining. That is your NEXT combo. If Higanbana needs reapplied, you can ignore that rule, using Yukikaze for a quick Sen. So, silly question, but why isn't Meikyo Shisui (Perfect Balance: SAM edition) used immediately to Shifu (Haste and 5 Kenki), Jinpu (Damage and 5 Kenki), Yukikaze (Slashing, 1 Sen, and 10 Kenki)?That way, you get all your buffs up, one Sen, and you should have 20 Kenki for an buffed DoT.I'm not a great theorycrafter or anything, so it's very possible I'm missing something super basic. Just thinking that immediately getting all the timers rolling ASAP would lead to more DPS through the fight. I ran these calculations a while back, but have them.We assume that you are in a raid scenario with neither NIN nor WAR.
This implies that our tanks are DRK and PLD. The PPS loss of the best early Yukikaze opener (which opens with Meikyo ShifuKashaHagakureYukikazeHakazeJinpuBanana) ends up netting you a Yukikaze at 4.57s with a 2.41 gcd. The standard opener gets Yukikaze out at 15.62s. Looking at it in terms of GCDs is irrelevant when SAM has a shorter GCD than PLD or DRK.What you then need to look at is 'what are these two Jobs doing in that time?'
Well, PLD's opener is. You're gaining Slashing on Goring Blade and that's it.
Because the standard gets Slashing out anyway before PLD rolls into Fight or Flight, we see it being pretty obvious that PLD is contributing nearly nothing.DRK's opener is monstrosity. If we sum up all of the potency (including the initial hit of Goring Blade) that will now be affected by Slashing Resistance, we get a whopping 2566 (not including AA's, but yes including Darkside and assuming Bloodspiller is slashing, which it probably is). Slashing gives us an additional 256.6 (tank) potency in that duration.Let's go back to SAM.Our Yukikaze opener ends up in the long run being 2 pps weaker than the normal. Min/max, you'll likely do Yukikaze. Generally fuck no.
The bonus to the tank potency there is gonna be negligible at best if the tanks either don't know what they're doing, or pull with tank stance.It's almost 4 AM and I'm getting tired so will edit this to be more cohesive when I wake up. Buttl;dr: Optimal Yukikaze opener might actually be worse than the standard, even in groups with PLD/DRK, due to the nature of their openers. I think autos sway it, assuming PLD autos during HS spam.
But even still the DRK autos under slashing will potentially not equal out because of future buff timings. Because each of the buffs costs 2 gcds to activate, whereas each Sen costs 3. By using Meikyo on 3 combo finishers, you save yourself 5 gcds instead of your method where you save 3. If we roll with your idea for the opener, we delay the Midare Setsugekka by at best 2 gcds. Or you Hagakure there. Either way, you're losing 2 gcds you otherwise have by doing a different opener.
If we assume the 1-sen haga opener but using your method of Meikyo, we get. If we decide on a 3-sen Haga opener instead, we get.
This is substantially weaker than the other options I've linked and suggested elsewhere. In both situations, by nearly twenty PPS. You should never, under normal circumstances, waste your Meikyo for something other than 3 casts of Sen. Keep in mind you can (and sometimes should) break up those Sen with a cast of Iaijutsu.
I'm having trouble understanding both of those.Like for my opener. Why does it go from the Shifu-Jinpu-Yukikaze buff combo into Hakaze-Yukikaze combo?
The intent of the Shifu-Jinpu-Yukikaze combo is to use all three to gain 1 Sen from yukikaze, and 20 total Kenki from the three weaponskills, so that the next move can be Kaiten+Higanbana. Instead, you use that one Sen for a Hagakure.Then on yours, you don't open with 3 Sen Hagakure. You open with Shifu-Jinpu-Yukikaze like I proposed. You don't Hagakure until 24s into the open.
I'm assuming it's a copy-paste related mistake, and it's supposed to be Gekko-Kasha-Yukikaze into Hagakure. I extrapolated your proposal into two different methods - 1-sen Haga, 3-sen Haga. The 1-sen Hagakure method doesn't suddenly become any less effective because of the way you set up your skills. If we Kaiten into a Higanbana there instead of the 1-sen Hagakure, we delay Hissatsu: Guren a rather incredibly substantial amount. It was an effort to show two different options for openers off of the incredibly sub-optimal opener you proposed in order to show you that, either way, you end up delaying the entire thing by two gcds. I'm severely confused by your response to the 3-sen opener version.If you Meikyo into Shifu-Jinpu-Yukikaze, you would follow with HakazeJinpu/ShifuHiganbanaGekko/Kasha and then build the 3 sen and use Hagakure, like I did. You can't just use another Meikyo after you wasted it on the pull, dude.
You don't get 2 of them lolI used Hagakure on 3 sen at the earliest possible time and the fact that it was at 24s is exactly the point. See, I thought you were trying to compare my 1-Sen opener to your 3-Sen opener. I didn't think it was you trying to create two versions of the Shifu-Jinpu-Yukikaze opener. Mainly because at no point in my question, had I been considering Hagakaze as a major priority.Okay, all of this confusion could have been avoided if you simply said, 'Getting Guren up with Hagakaze ASAP is more valuable than getting the buffs up ASAP.'
I did say I wasn't great at theorycrafting, and that I was probably missing something. Hagakaze-Guren was that something.
It's less Hagakure, more wanting to get Hagakure and Midare Setsugekka out as fast as possible. Hagakure uses sen, Midare uses sen, Higanbana uses sen. That means that we're looking at either 5 total sen for the opener (1-sen Hagakure) or 7 total sen. A rotation to get +3 Sen with no cooldown usage is 8 gcds long. Meikyo turns 8 into three. You'll press the buffs en route to said sen regardless, is the big key here. Once you realize we need 5 sen for the 1-sen Hagakure opener, you realize that using 6 gcds for 2 of them, 3 gcds for the next 3 gives you 9 (10 counting bana, 11 counting Midare) total GCDs spent for 5 sen, which is much much better than the 11 (12 counting bana) you'd be using for four sen.
One fewer sen, 2 extra GCDs.The 3-sen Hagakure opener makes it even clearer. You use 6 gcds for the first 2 sen, Meikyo for the next 3, and then you just have to do two combos (5-6 gcds) to finish your last two and get the Midare out. That's 14-15 gcds (15-16 counting bana).
With your opener, it would take us 19 gcds for the same amount of sen generation to get 3-sen Hagakure and Midare Setsugekka.Basically just a long-winded way of saying 'Using Meikyo Shisui for something other than three casts of Sen generation is wasteful in 90% of situations.' The 'optimal' Yukikaze opener rolls shifukashayukikaze and then slips into Jinpu and etc. It still slows it all down, but not by as substantial an amount, and I am still convinced that the gains to the tanks will not outweigh the personal dps loss in the only situation it matters (no nin/no war).
The Samurai is one of the two new Jobs introduced in Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion, Stormblood.